Collective psychological ownership : an emerging construct for workplace well-being

Abstract

Workplace well-being refers to all aspects in organizational contexts that contribute to staff’s self-fulfillment and actualization, and the satisfaction of their innate needs. The symptom-oriented approach to workplace well-being has been predominant for half a century. This approach focuses on staff’s negative experiences at work, and aims to eliminate symptoms against workplace well-being. Burnout is a prevalent syndrome underlying this approach. However, solely emphasizing the symptoms does not guarantee better well-being. The rise of positive psychology in the past decade represents a paradigm shift. It turns people’s mindset toward positive elements at work, such as work engagement. Fostering staff’s work engagement has become a new goal. Preliminary findings suggested that some positive domains may foster work engagement, such as meaningfulness, self-efficacy and job control. Along with the development of positive psychology, decreasing burnout and fostering engagement become parallel goals. The job demands-resources (JD-R) model is a predominant model which has been extensively used in previous studies to explain burnout and work engagement. However, the relationships among the four variables of the model require further studies. Psychological factors are lacking in the model and the psychological mechanism that links up the two processes is unclear. For further exploration of the JD-R model, collective psychological ownership (CPO) is incorporated into the model in the current study. CPO is a psychological construct proposed in early 2000. Pierce and Jussila defined CPO as a collectively held sense or feeling by group mates that the target of ownership is collectively theirs. Preliminary studies on CPO have highlighted its potential positive impacts on workplace well-being. However, the conceptualization and operationalization of CPO are still at their early stage. The previous conceptualization of CPO has its limitations. Empirical studies on the implications of CPO in organizational contexts are yet to be performed. To fill the above research gaps, four studies were devised in the present research. Study I conceptualized CPO in organizational contexts. A multi-item scale was developed and validated to measure CPO among social service workers. The results supported a one-general-two-specific structure of CPO. The shared sense of possessiveness is the general factor of CPO, while the two specific factors of CPO are shared decision-making and shared hardship endurance. Study II examined the role of CPO in the JD-R model and examined its impacts on burnout, engagement, and turnover intention. The findings revealed that CPO is a significant psychological mechanism in the two processes of the JD-R model. CPO made a significant contribution in the models to predict burnout, engagement, and turnover intention. Study III examined the antecedents of CPO. The findings indicated that job demands-resources and membership identification are important predictors for CPO. Study IV was performed to explore social workers’ subjective experience of burnout, engagement, and CPO. The findings offered a richer understanding of the associations among these constructs. This research enriches the understanding of the roles of CPO in the JD-R model in explaining burnout and work engagement. The findings have both practical and theoretical implications (493 words).